SmokingHot (16 page)

The bride by the side of the Vegas highway stuck her thumb out when she spotted his truck. Hitching for a ride, he thought, when she should have been riding high in a limo. A bright red roller bag decorated with polka-dot duct tape peeked out from behind the enormous white mountain of her wedding dress. She shifted as he drew closer, waving her thumb frantically, and he caught a glimpse of pink Converse sneakers. It wasn’t a sight a man saw every day—and that was saying something, since Adrian Henry had spent the last two years working a Vegas firehouse. He’d seen plenty of things, some of which he would have given his right nut to unsee.

From the looks of the bride, she’d had a similar day. Her mascara had run, giving her a raccoon-like look (as the baby brother to three older sisters, he’d been the unwilling subject of far too many make-overs and had learned the difference between waterproof and wash-off when he’d had to go to first grade sporting mascaraed lashes). She wasn’t crying now, however. In fact, she looked angry. Maybe she sensed he had no intention of stopping. He probably wasn’t the first to pass her by, even if the highway was empty now. The dress billowed around her, one of those big puffballs of white and gauzy stuff. Her veil fluttered from the outer pocket of the roller bag.

The only thing missing was the groom.

When he blew on past her, going fifty because he couldn’t put Vegas behind him too fast, she blew him a quick kiss and flashed him the bird. Oh, she was trouble. He respected her
fuck you
attitude, however. Whatever had happened to her, she’d done her crying and now she was getting on with living. Like him.

His foot hesitated, shifting from the gas pedal to the brake, like it had a mind of its own.
Don’t rush in. Not this time.
He’d been first into that burning apartment building last month—and the final firefighter out. No more rescues. No more knee-jerk reactions. That was his new mantra.

Lord knew, he shouldn’t stop. But he was a Louisiana boy and his mother would kill him if he didn’t. His sisters would also bend his ear if they ever found out and they’d displayed an uncanny ability to ferret out his misdeeds over the years. He didn’t have time to rescue damsels in distress. He had to be in Strong, California in forty-eight hours to start his new job as a smoke jumper with Donovan Brothers and he
needed
this new job. His last fire call had been bad. When he joined the jump team, he wouldn’t have to remember finding three small bodies inside that last bedroom. No more structural fires for him, no more riding the ladder, sirens screaming. Sure, he still got that adrenaline rush when the tones went off and every man in the station house ran for the engine, but now he knew there was every chance he didn’t get there in time.

And, sometimes, no chance at all.

Smoke jumping would let him fight fire, but out in the open, him against Mother Nature, jumping right into the heart of the big one from a plane. He liked the idea of that, so much so that when his cousin, Cole Henry, had texted him about the opening with the Donovan Brothers jump team, he hadn’t thought twice. He’d quit his job, loaded his shit into his truck, and headed out of town.

As of this morning, he was starting over, on the road and headed somewhere better. He got the feeling the little gal parked by the side of the road might understand those sentiments. When he looked in his rearview mirror, however, she had her back to him and was staring determinedly down the Nevada highway, back toward Vegas. She’d have a long, hot wait. He hadn’t passed anyone for miles and it was already hotter than Hades. The weather was perfect fire weather, everything tinder dry and ready to spark.

Damn it.

He hit the brakes and stopped the truck. She immediately walked up the side of the road to him, tossed her bag in the back next to his gear, and yanked open the passenger side door. All before he could get a word out. She was a take-charge thing, half-teary and half-upset, riding that thin edge between righteous anger and an all-night binge with a package of Oreos and two quarts of Ben and Jerry’s. A wise man would have kept on going because a woman like this was going to be holding a grudge against his gender for a long, long time.

“Step on it,” she ordered, like they’d already settled everything between them and he was simply here to pick her up.

She dropped down on his seat, her dress billowing up around them both. White tulle on his arm, his thigh—there was a sea of gauzy white pretty much everywhere he looked. Her dress was one of those strapless numbers, the kind held up by double-sided tape and a whole lot of praying. His eldest sister had explained once that if she inhaled deeply, the whole thing could end up around her waist. Examining his passenger, he decided that might not be a bad thing. The parts of her he could see around the explosion of white were pretty as hell. She was petite, but something about her screamed
strong
. Her bare arms were lightly muscled, her skin sun-kissed everywhere he looked, thin white lines from a bikini top crisscrossing her shoulders. She also came with a handful of freckles in places he’d like to kiss. Seeing her naked—
touching
her—would be a fantasy come true.

And that was before he got a good look at her face. He’d noticed the mascara tracks from the road, but now he saw that her blonde hair had been caught up into a complex twist, curls escaping left and right. Someone must have sacrificed a can of Aqua Net to its creation, however, because her hairdo was only half-wilted from the heat radiating in from the outside. When she leaned over and yanked the door shut, he caught a glimpse of a heart-shaped face, with long lashes and brown eyes. She was pretty, not beautiful, but there was something painfully alive and impishly naughty about her eyes. He’d always been a sucker for eyes like hers. He might not believe in love at first sight, but he was plenty convinced in lust at first sight.

Starting with his errant bride.

Tapping his fingers on the wheel, he tried to make up his mind what he should
do
with her. “You don’ think we should introduce ourselves first?”

***

Getting into the truck’s cab had required a hop-and-jump number to swing herself up. The move definitely wasn’t dignified but Chloe had abandoned all pretense at dignity earlier, when she’d put on her monstrosity of a dress. The thing was twice her size and clearly had a mind of its own. Unfortunately, her choices at Goodwill had been limited. The only other option had been a silky sheathe that might have accommodated half her body, but which had most definitely not been large enough to hold her entirely.

Truly, she didn’t care if the driver were an ax murderer (okay, she did, although it was close). She needed out.
Now.
Or yesterday. Yesterday would have been even better, before she’d agreed to elope with Big Timmy and quit her job at the diner.

Burned her bridges.

Pissed in the pond.

“Go,” she said again because her rescuer had clearly missed his cue.

“Now I’m definitely thinkin’ we might have ourselves a problem, sweet thing.” The truck’s owner had a smoky Louisiana drawl that made her girly bits sit up and take notice.
Yum.
He was a dark haired, dark-eyed man, big enough to more than filled up the truck’s cab. He wore a T-shirt with a fire department logo, faded jeans, and a pair of battered steel-toed work boots. The aviator sunglasses shoved up on top of his head meant she could clearly see his expression as he stared at her, clearly stunned. Yeah. She had that effect on people.

“Your truck’s pointed in the right direction.” She fastened her seatbelt. Axe murderer or not, going headfirst through the windshield wouldn’t improve her bad day any. She sensed, however, that she could trust him. It might have had something to do with the cat carrier parked on the cab’s narrow backseat. Her rescuer apparently travelled with a momma cat with two small orange kittens. Any man with cats couldn’t possibly be all bad and even partially bad was an improvement on the men currently in her life.

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t step on the gas, didn’t get them moving. She risked a backwards glance over her shoulder at the wedding chapel. The building was missing a few pink Spanish tiles from the roof, but the painted palm trees on the white stucco were defiantly cheerful and the strings of white Christmas lights twinkled absurdly in the afternoon sun. There were no other signs of life yet, but her luck would run out soon enough. That was just how her life had gone so far. Except, she reminded herself, she was changing that. She’d make her own luck, thank you very much.

“You expectin’ company?”

She ignored his question, because, duh, her dress should have been his first clue. Brides didn’t fly solo. “Try the left pedal,” she suggested sweetly.

He scrubbed a hand over his head. “Last time I checked, my truck was missing a
taxi
sign.”

She sighed. “You’re not terribly flexible, are you?”

Flexibility was important. Marrying (or almost marrying) Big Timmy would have been a mistake, because he’d been every bit as unbending as her own daddy. Big Timmy had ideas about how his wife should behave and she was pretty certain she’d have been a disappointment on that front. He wouldn’t have been a hitter—she’d learned how to avoid
that
, thanks to her daddy—but words could hurt almost as much as actual blows and she had no desire to live out the rest of her life in a disapproving deep freeze. It was just as well Big Timmy had failed to show up at the chapel today. She wondered briefly who had talked some sense into him, but it didn’t matter.

“You don’ know me,” he pointed out, which was true.

“You can drive and tell me all about yourself.” She’d listen, too. She was perfectly happy for this man to talk and talk, as long as he kept on driving. She needed to shake the dust of Spotlight, population 347, from her feet. A population minus one, she promised herself, because she wasn’t staying here. She’d sworn she’d do whatever it took to move on and start over. Now, it looked like God had heard her prayers and sent her this man. He wasn’t precisely what she’d hoped for, but she’d make do. She always did. Plus, she had every stitch she owned in the world crammed into her suitcase and just two hundred bucks to her name. Waitressing was not a lucrative gig and rent, even in Spotlight’s trailer park, had eaten up most of her income.

He looked at the wedding chapel, then back at her. She sighed. He was going to make her explain and she hated explanations. Explanations always got her into hot water.

“Did you lose your
beau
?”

Beau
sounded exotic and downright lovely coming from this man’s mouth. He probably could have read her the phone book, and she would have drunk in the caramel-colored words, his soft burr exotic and downright decadent. It was like offering hummingbird cake to a woman on a diet. What else could he say? Pretty words. Lover words.
No
. She was done with the male of the species. All she needed right now was a driver and a way out.

“Yes,” she said, shoving down the mountain of tulle. “Do you think you could drive now?”

“
You’re just goin’ to get in a truck with a total stranger? Do you have any idea what could happen to you?” Now her mystery white knight definitely sounded more grumpy than suave.

She wrestled her skirts down while her stranger methodically ticked off a list of horror stories. Throat slit, body tossed in a ravine. Deader than a doornail and no coming back. She got it.

She stopped him mid-description of a serial killer who had hunted Vegas prostitutes for eighteen months before he’d been arrested. Hopefully, her new ride hadn’t mistaken her for a hooker. “You’ve got sisters, don’t you?”

His big hands tightened visibly on the steering wheel. She checked, but there was no ring or pale circle of skin where a ring had been. Some guys shucked their jewelry like they did their promises.

“
Oui
, you bet,” he growled. “Three of them. And if any of
them
hopped into a truck with a total stranger, I’d be lockin’ her up.”

“Medieval.” But also strangely like-worthy.

“How old are you?” He looked suspicious.

“Twenty,” she informed him cheerfully. “Old enough. I’m Chloe Rey.”

She stuck out a hand and he was too polite not to take it.

He sighed and they were close enough that she could feel his breath gust her skin. “Adrian Henry.”

“Well, Adrian, where are we headed?”

He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a groan, but he put the truck into drive and signaled to turn onto the highway. Lordy, but he liked playing by the rules.

“
I’m
goin’ to Strong, California,” he told her, checking his blind spot as he pulled out onto the road.
Finally
. She could have told him that almost no one came out this way. She’d been standing there for an hour. The only reason she hadn’t started walking was because it was ten miles to town and she knew her daddy would be waking up from his drunk soon. She didn’t see any point in borrowing that kind of trouble and pairing it with heat stroke.

“Sounds good to me,” she said, because any place was better than here. Her dress popped back up and she made a frustrated sound. “Do you have a knife?”